Microsoft has been acting hard to understand from the moment Windows 10 was released. Over the past five years, Microsoft has changed the interval between updating Windows 10 (and many times), changing how long it will support Windows 10 (and more than once), downgrading some versions of Windows 10 to a mess. Other versions made it worthless as business software.
A whim revised rule and moving the goal too often left the goal at all. Users were constantly confused, spending a lot of time figuring out the situation and trying to figure out why all of this keeps changing.
Microsoft should stop this chaotic move. Now it's time to make decisions, establish and focus on Windows 10's vision. Microsoft didn't ask Computer World for advice, but I have to say anything anyway. It's not because we know how to run multi-billion-dollar businesses. Instead, it clearly knows what is desirable for the user. After all, we, like most companies, are customers of Microsoft.
Upgrade once a year, only once.
Prior to the release of Windows 10 in July 2015, Microsoft detailed its software as a service (SaaS) strategy that it planned to deploy with the new OS. Windows 10 was scheduled to be regularly updated three times a year, with new features and new features. In other words, it is once every 4 months. This update schedule was followed exactly once. After the initial release, the upgrade was announced in less than four months. Then it was quietly absent. The next upgrade didn't come out in the next nine months.
After one upgrade in 2016, Microsoft has set a new rule. You upgrade twice a year, that is, once every six months. This system lasted for two years. After a bust (Windows 10 1089 was several months behind schedule), Microsoft revised the upgrade interval again. In 2019 and 2020, Microsoft released one valid upgrade in the spring, a version with several new contents. However, in the fall, an upgrade that was just a pretense came out. The schedule was maintained, but it was only nominal. The fall upgrade was just a slight improvement to the spring upgrade and included interim fixes.
We don't know why Microsoft continues this pretense. Now I urge you to abandon your pretense and work properly. In other words, it upgrades once a year. The once-a-year upgrade is not only an upgrade that Microsoft has actually provided over the past two years, it is also the interval chosen by competitors such as Google and Apple. They have long provided annual upgrades for macOS, iOS, and Android. Users do not require more frequent upgrades for these operating systems at all. I don't think it's particularly different as a Windows user.
Returning to the point, Microsoft argued that, at least initially, that upgrade interval was essential to delivering rapidly emerging technologies to users. This was persuasive in its own way, but the reality did not flow that way. Was there any feature that was added to a specific upgrade, but would have been a problem even if it came out six months later? Is there any good reason to upgrade more than once a year from the perspective of users?
Give everyone the same support
Like the release interval, the support lifecycle has changed constantly. Prior to release, support was expected to continue for 12 months. Looking back now, it's a dangerously short period (but at that time, Microsoft planned to upgrade three times a year). However, by the time of release, Microsoft split support for Windows Home and Pro by extending the support period to 18 months and Enterprise and Education versions to 24 months. It's funny but argued that Office for Mac is a 'consumer' product, so it makes sense to get 50% of normal support (I never said this about Office for Windows, designed for home use).
Since then, more modifications followed. Representatively, it extended support for enterprise and education by six months. And it was postponed one more time due to the coronavirus pandemic. However, the patterns and policies were clear. The proletarian class was 18 months and the estate class was 30 months. Microsoft attempted to promote the sale of some products (SKUs, or stock-keep units) using the discretion of setting support. I don't know if it's a coincidence, but these are the more expensive licenses. This move is not customer friendly at all. Prior to Windows 10, people could receive security updates at the same time or 10 years. This equality disappeared with the advent of Windows 10.
Microsoft should reintroduce equal support. Overall, if you can't do that, you should give Windows 10 Pro the same duration as Enterprise/Education. This allows small businesses running Windows 10 Pro to upgrade every two years, what a huge business competitor can do. In addition, consistency can be achieved even for large enterprises that mix pro and enterprise PCs.
Moreover, this change does not burden Microsoft. In the case of Enterprise and Education anyway, you need to make a fix for the flaws in the individual versions of Windows 10 (2H, or 2H update). Providing the same updates for Home and Pro is almost a matter of distribution. It's not about dealing with other bugs. It is understandable that Microsoft is pricing a higher price for Windows 10 Enterprise based on the added and enhanced features and functionality. However, the practice of separating support terms by product should be stopped.
Ignore the consumer market
When it comes to consumers, more appropriately, Microsoft has been clumsy in creating and selling consumer-oriented products. From petty hustle and bustle like Zune to mobile catastrophes, Microsoft has failed classes in this area, and success has been poor.
Still, the reason the company did not collapse was not because of luck, but because of a smart corporate focus strategy. As smartphones came in, sales of PCs declined. This is because the consumer did not replace the PC. However, the company was steady (although, of course, the speed of replacement was reduced). Because the PC was still the best device for productivity tasks. Microsoft's turn to the cloud, and its financial success from Azure and its numerous subsidiaries, have made consumer products less important than ever. Business customers are important because the corporate market is Microsoft's source of income. On the other hand, consumer customers are becoming less and less important.
In the end, targeting the consumer market is to waste time and resources on a market where profitability is low and profits are bound to be low. This is because it is not a field that Microsoft is good at. There are limits to increasing prices, and you have to sell products one at a time.
Microsoft should abandon Windows 10 Home and unify the factory-installed OS by OEMs with Windows 10 Pro. This will reduce the number of products by one and benefit Microsoft. Moreover, it becomes possible to use all PCs for business purposes. It doesn't matter if the workplace is a home office or a university dormitory. More importantly, Microsoft should stop creating consumer-flavored features in Windows 10. Things like emoji and VR (fortunately Microsoft is already moving in this direction, turning Cortana into an Office 365 assistant for example).
The most important thing in this discussion is how to reduce the time/resource for consumer-oriented functions and use them elsewhere. Finding the answer is not difficult at all. You just need to put more into improving the quality of your updates. In other words, monthly security updates, annual or feature enhancement upgrades. This is to improve the quality management pointed out by many IT professionals. In fact, most of the administrators who responded to the survey by Susan Bradley, blogger of Computer World, said Microsoft's patch quality was unsatisfactory.
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